We love your toes
The message box flashed again. “Allow phase synchronization with The Stantons?”
“Yes,” whispered Daniel.
The device on his chest beeped and clicked. 4200. 4400, glowed the LED display. The Stantons grew clearer. Their outlines sharpened. 4700. The didgeridoo returned to its usual plaintive warble. 4800.
We love your meat
A tongue, wetter than a tongue could be, licked his neck. A finger traced the fine black hairs down his sternum. Down his abdomen. Down, down to the buckle of his smartpants.
Hands cupped his pecs. Slid across the small of his back.
His pants. Unbuckled.
The cool night air pricked his buttocks. Swam around his scrotum. A tongue searched between his lips.
“Ouch!” he yelled, and thrust a head away from his crotch. “What you … what are you doing?”
A young man looked up at him, eyes dreamy. “Sorry man, I’ll be more careful this time.” The boy opened his mouth, leaned forward.
Daniel shoved him away. Flung hands off his chest. Spat out the tongue. Yanked up his pants.
Gods, oh Gods.
Aware. Awake. He gaped at the scene around him.
Writhing flesh. Bodies entangled in an ocean of depravity. Mouths and hands. Moans. Fingers searching.
And on the stage, surrounding the Stantons, the crowd inched forward on their knees. They licked and laughed, while the Stantons played on, nude.
We had you cleaned
A blond stroked the wooden ridges of the didgeridoo. Another fondled Bob Stanton’s ankles. Reached up …
We had you eat
What had happened? What had he done? The devil was in the didgeridoo.
Gods, he couldn’t watch it a moment longer. But he didn’t have to. Bob allowed the didgeridoo to fall to the stage with a hollow thwunk. Ben waved the microphone away. And amid pleas and cheers, the brothers exited the stage, pursued by a posse of extremely naked girls.
“Wish we’d bought golden circle tickets,” said a girl behind Daniel. “I hear the Stantons put on quite a show in their change room.”
That’s it, thought Daniel, adjusting the dial on his chest. He knew what he needed to do. He knew how to retrieve his lungs.
The crowd shimmered to gray, then disappeared entirely, as the modulator phased him down. By the time the device was set to 2300, all he could see was grass.
“Call Margaret,” he whispered to his glasses.
*
Una under the phosphorescent glow of the ice cream bar.
Una licking the edges of a sugar cone.
Una smiling a filthy smile.
Una reaching across the table.
Tearing the heart from Kage’s chest.
Una.
Kage felt as though he was back in the tank at The Regulus, swimming in the obsidian reflections of her eyes.
She asked him questions. And he answered, forgetting what he’d said before he’d finished.
She laughed, and he laughed too. He didn’t know why. But he knew it felt right.
Her fingers brushed his as they both reached for a serviette. And every thought, every dream Kage had ever had, rushed into the static spark that connected them.
Una finished her ice cream. And he finished his.
“So,” she said, wrapping her jacket around her bare shoulders, “where to?”
Kage sucked in a breath too large for his female lungs. “Your place?” he wheezed.
Una regarded him from behind a considered frown. “You sure?”
A tremor galloped up Kage’s leg.
“Yes,” he said breathlessly.
She took him by the elbow, and led him to the exit of the ice cream bar. Kage didn’t notice, he couldn’t notice, the strange couple in the corner booth. Watching him.
Rocky Road
“Margaret has never eaten ice cream. Margaret has no stomach for it.”
“Uh, that won’t be a problem ma’am. We only offer phased desserts. They disappear the moment you swallow them.” The waitress raised an eyebrow to the ice cream bar’s slogan hovering above the table. “All the taste with none of the guilt,” she droned.
“I’ll have the chocolate,” said Daniel. The thought of his artificial liver stabbed his conscience. He’d tried eating one of the delicacies from the food printer the previous evening at Margaret’s. It hadn’t ended well.
He brushed the memory aside. He’d deal with the consequences later. Or not, he realized. It was phased ice cream after all.
“Margaret has never eaten anything,” said the android.
The waitress eyed her from under a crumpled brow.
“Don’t mind her,” Daniel said quickly. “She doesn’t get out much.”
“Uhuh.” The waitress clapped, and the candle hovering above the middle of the table ignited. “Sure I can’t get you anything?”
Margaret ran her fingers along the table’s edge.
The waitress stared down at the green trail of pus left behind. “You look like a rocky road customer to me,” she said cautiously.
“Rocky road,” whispered Margaret. She steepled her fingers. One of the nails hung precariously from its bed. “Margaret will have rocky road.”
“Chocolate and rocky road,” said the waitress. “Coming right up.”
“Give me the satchel,” said Daniel, once the waitress had disappeared.
“Thank you,” said Margaret.
Daniel shook his head. “For what?”
“Daniel is supposed to thank Margaret.”
“Thank you,” said Daniel.
Margaret smiled a lipless smile. Handed him the satchel.
“Humans are strange. Margaret does not compute why they travel vast distances to eat, when the food printers in their homes will suffice.” She regarded the frolicking patrons of the ice cream bar.
“I guess we like spending time together,” said Daniel.
A table of a dozen bubblers sat staring into space. He’d grown used to that blank stare. They were accessing the overlay on their glasses. Suddenly, as if as one, they threw up a cauldron of laughter.
“On second thought, it’s a mystery,” he said.
Margaret drew shapes on the tabletop with her pus. “What time is the concert?”
Daniel averted his eyes. “They’re on again in …” He checked the electronic ticket on his overlay. “… an hour. I’m sending you the ticket now.”
“Thank you,” Margaret said slowly.
Daniel couldn’t help but smile.
He peered over at the drawing on the table. Couldn’t make out the shape.
He examined the ticket. “It’s golden circle. That means you’ll be at the front.”
“Then Margaret gets her lips?” she asked
“And I get my lungs,” he said.
“And Hal gets her two arms and –”
“Yes.”
“And kidneys,” Margaret insisted.
Daniel gave a curt nod. Looked away.
“Lips,” Margaret said dreamily. She stroked her beak. “Lips.”
Daniel caught his reflection in the gleaming tabletop. He didn’t know if he’d ever feel at home in this new face. Swollen cheeks. Splotchy nose. He’d been a drinker in a previous life, it seemed.
“Margaret does not know what it is like to eat. Daniel will tell Margaret what it feels like.”
Daniel sighed. “I don’t know.”
“But Daniel eats multiple times daily. Daniel must know.”
Daniel ignored her. His mind turned to the Stantons. When he’d seen his lungs on their chests, he hadn’t been angry, exactly. Their music was … well he had to admit, it was breathtaking. Did he deserve the lungs more than they did? They were his after all. But were they?
He’d been born with them. But he’d lost them at age thirteen. How long had the Stantons been using his lungs? Probably the last five years. If someone arrived today, and claimed Odin as his own from before Daniel rescued him, woul
d she be entitled to the cat? Even though Daniel had cared for Odin all these years. Loved him. Slept beside him through a thousand nights.
He wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure about any of it. But what seemed clearer was that Margaret didn’t deserve the Stantons’ lips. Hal didn’t deserve their arms or kidneys.
But if he was entitled to their lungs, his lungs, and the only way to retrieve them was to give Margaret and Hal their share of the spoils …?
“What happens to the ice cream?”
Jostled from his thoughts, he looked up at Margaret.
“Not sure,” he said. But he grew curious. Easier to think about ice cream than arms and kidneys. What did happen to the ice cream when it switched phase? “I can find out,” he said.
Daniel twisted the dial on his chest. Up. 3000. Margaret’s shape became a shivering squiggle of lines. 4000. She dissipated to a ghostly glow. But the ice cream bar did not. It changed, though. The soft phosphorescent light shifted to stark halogen. 5000. He was forced to stand as the chair under his buttocks softened into a buttery paste, then faded out of existence. 6000. The tables, with their gaggles of Bubblers, distorted and dissolved. At 7000, his eyes watered. Jellied shapes swam around him. He blinked. Again. Rubbed his eyes.
People. Pale. Some without skin. All with cybernetic implants. He’d almost forgotten what they looked like. The Gutters.
They swept and mopped. Scrubbed and scoured the rancid sludge on the floors where the tables had been. The ice cream.
One of the cleaners, a girl with flaxen eyes, looked up at him. “Hello?”
Daniel started at the voice. It echoed. Bounded around the room, then crystallized into a single, clear tone in the front of his skull.
He felt at odds. An intruder in a realm he shouldn’t see. But at the same time … he belonged here. With the grunge and the grime. With the cleaners and their mangled bodies.
“Hi,” said Daniel, and stepped over a mound of pale goo.
“Are you the new bucket boy?” she asked. Her eyes were tired. But tender.
“Uh, no. I’m not from here. I mean … I’m from another –”
The girl sighed. Resumed her sweeping. “You’re looking for phase twenty-three hundred.”
“No, I … uh, want to be here. I just came from twenty-three hundred.”
The girl laid down her broom with tiny hands. “Here?” She glanced around the filthy room.
He held out his hand. “My name is Daniel.”
She considered him. Stared full, shameless, into his eyes.
He noticed now that it wasn’t just her eyes. Her cheeks were jaundiced too.
“Autumn,” she said.
Autumn. A cog in the back of Daniel’s mind turned, engaging another. Autumn. Somewhere in the conveyer belt of his brain, a pulley snagged. He’d heard the name before. But he couldn’t place it.
She glanced down at her hand before she shook his. Under the soot, her flesh was supple. Yielding.
She tapped her glasses. One of the lenses was cracked. The frame was chipped. “I’m due for a tea break. I can show you around?”
“I’d like that,” he said. “Very much.”
Autumn showed him the buckets and mops. The furnace at the back of the store for burning the waste. “We placed it in the same spot as one of the toilet cubicles in twenty-three hundred. Some of the heat occasionally filters down-phase.” Autumn smiled guiltily.
She introduced Daniel to the other cleaners. A onesie, a girl without cheeks, and a man with four mechanical arms. They greeted him, but they couldn’t meet his eyes.
She walked him to the hole in the wall where the windows had been in phase 2300. He looked out into the mall. Interspersed through the episodes of Law and Order, Daniel had watched a variety of zombie films and series. Bacchus Mall in phase 7000 was the perfect zompoc setting. Kipple everywhere. Discarded food. Needles. Partially digested food. All the glorious byproducts of the Bubble.
Even as he watched, more kipple materialized. “They send it through every fifteen minutes,” said Autumn.
The onesie examined her skinless hands. “The needles are the worst. I just don’t get it. They’re lucky enough to have skin, and all they want to do is puncture it.”
“The condoms get to me,” said the cheekless girl.
As he watched, kipple appeared in mounds around the mucky interior of the mall.
“It’s not all bad,” said Autumn, taking him by the hand. “This way.”
He followed her up flights of endless stairs. The crud on the walls seemed to distort and oscillate as he climbed. Even with her elfin frame, he struggled to keep up with her. Every few flights, he had to stop, and hack until his chest cleared.
“Need new lungs?” she asked.
He wheezed. “Need my … old … lungs.”
Her brow curled into a question mark as she waited for him to regain his breath. But she didn’t ask more about it.
Autumn hopped onto a steel landing. “We’re here.”
Daniel lumbered the last few steps. Stood beside her. She looked out over the cesspool that was the mall, bliss blanketing her features. As though they’d just ascended a mountain, and she was drinking in the vista.
One man’s trash heap is another man’s treasure, he reasoned.
“What frequency you on?” she asked.
He checked the phase modulator on his chest. “Seven thousand.”
“No wonder,” she said. “Turn it up to the maximum setting. Seven thousand and forty-nine.”
49, a square of seven, thought Daniel. He twisted the dial.
Daniel’s breath caught at the landscape that found him. His eyes ached with it. His lungs burned with it. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t blink. “Gods,” he whispered.
Autumn’s face came alive. “It’s quite something, isn’t it?”
And it was.
His chronometer ticked to the quarter-hour, and the floor of the mall came alive. Mounds of rubbish appeared in random fancy on the floor. But it wasn’t the color of rubbish. It no longer looked like vomit or excrement, or whatever it was the Bubblers had dumped. The mounds glowed in ultraviolet colors he’d never seen. An impossibly deep blue. Pink that seemed to shimmer both white and red at once. A kaleidoscopic orange that he’d only seen in the heart of a fire. The mounds appeared and vanished, winking into and out of existence in an impossibly complex fractal dance.
“I’ve never seen anything like … this is …”
He scraped his gaze from the view. Looked over at Autumn. Reflections from the glowing mounds swum across her face. Caressed the subtle line of her jaw. Smoothed out the dark circles under her eyes.
“I come here to relax,” she said.
That’s when he realized he wasn’t just hearing her. As she spoke, silky tendrils wafted from her mouth. They swirled in the air, knitting in and out of one another. The smoky wisps emanating from her lips were mint green initially, but turned a pale blue with time. “The others don’t like the climb. But I do it every lunch break. It makes me feel … together.”
Floating in the air were the sentences she’d just uttered. A ball of pastel shapes, encircling itself with gentle grace.
Daniel gasped. “What’s happening?” His words issued as colors from his own mouth. The shades of a sunset. Burgundy and sepia. The hues of a forest floor. His utterance, a star-shaped geometry of tangential lines, floated in the air beside Autumn’s.
He felt her elbow brush against his. Their sentences floated closer together, combining. Intertwining to form a single, unique geometry.
She laughed a cloud of crimson petals. They stroked his cheek. Tickled his ear. “I like the way we weave our thoughts together,” she said.
“So do I.”
He felt it then. Just as the wispy smoke of their expressions began to fade … a tingle on his back. Between his shoulder blades. It appeared at first as a translucent filament drifting in the air between them. He saw it form on her back too, and felt it form on his own. As he w
atched, it grew opaque. A thin tube of color connected them. Autumn’s pastel green. Daniel’s sunset crimson. As if the tube was passing a fluid between them. The molten desire in their hearts.
His overlay flashed a reminder. The Stantons were performing in ten minutes.
“I’m sorry, Autumn. I have to go.”
All the joy in her faded to a pinprick. The filament connecting them shriveled. Dwindled to an afterimage. “No problem,” she said quickly, and headed for the stairs.
He reached out for her hand. “Please wait.”
She turned to him, shame in her eyes. “You have better things to do.” Her words were sulfurous gray on the air.
“I don’t,” he said. “But I have to go. I have … I have to …”
“You don’t have to explain,” she said.
Daniel stepped toward her. And did something he’d never done. He leaned closer, through the wisps of her thoughts, through his own doubts. He kissed her.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. Anyone like …” He kissed her again.
Her hands relaxed in his. The rigidity in her elbows. The crease upon her brow. The wisps of shame hanging in the air. All of it, released.
“You’ll come back?” she asked.
“I will.”
They made their way down the stairs. Back to the ice cream bar. The man with four arms was mopping the floor and sweeping at the same time.
“Stand there,” she said. “It’s a safe zone – there’ll be nobody there in twenty-three hundred when you switch phases.”
“What if there is someone there?”
“Not a big deal. Pretty uncomfortable for both of you, but you’ll separate before you re-phase fully.”
Daniel shrugged. “Okay.” His fingers paused above the modulator on his chest. “Bye,” he said. And twisted.
6000. 5000. 4000. The ice cream bar’s inhabitants appeared as silvery ghosts around him. 3000. There was his table. Margaret’s single-eared form. 2300.
“Where has Daniel been?” asked Margaret. She rapped the tabletop with each word.
He sat opposite her. “It’s not important.” He could still feel Autumn’s lips on his. She tasted of plums.
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